Had he not been gay, Tony Warren reckons that he wouldn't have been equipped to create Coronation Street. "The outsider sees more, hears more, has to remember more to survive," he says. "All that is terrific training for a writer."

A "rather sissified little boy" who grew up in Swinton, greater Manchester, in the 40s and 50s, Warren honed his ear for dialogue by listening to his mother, aunties and grandmother talk in the latter's kitchen, a space free of men in which women could speak freely. Little wonder that he could so ably articulate the hopes and fears of working-class women; and the templates he established 50 years ago are still at the core of Coronation Street, with something of a golden thread linking Elsie Tanner and Becky McDonald, Ena Sharples and Blanche Hunt.

Of course, homosexuality was illegal in the UK until 1967. "In those days, if you were going to work in television and you were gay, you had to be three times as good as anyone else," he says, fire in his voice. "The first Coronation Street writing team contained some of the biggest homophobes I've ever met. I remember getting to my feet in a story conference and saying: 'Gentlemen, I have sat here for two-and-a-half hours and listened to three poof jokes, a storyline dismissed as poofy and an actor described as 'useless for us as he's a poof'. As a matter of fact, he isn't. But I would point out that I am one, and without a poof none of you would be in work today.'"

It's curious that for all Warren's boldness and Coronation Street's abundance of magnificently damaged female characters who became gay icons – Bet Lynch and her "It's not a smile, it's a lid on a scream" line spring to mind – Weatherfield didn't have a bona fide gay resident until Todd Grimshaw in 2003 – long after EastEnders and Emmerdale did.

"I campaigned for years and years with subsequent producers to no avail," Warren says. "But I never theorise – I thought that it would all work itself out."

And, in a way, it did. While some squirm at the stereotypical campness of Sean Tully, he's one of Coronation Street's most-loved characters, and the recent coming-out story of Sophie Webster has been a triumph, demonstrating what Coronation Street prides itself on: the primacy of character over plot. And that, perhaps, is Warren's greatest achievement – building a street where great characters live and millions of visitors revel in their company.